Color of Surveillance: Government Monitoring of Religious Minorities

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Across our country’s history – from the surveillance of the Separatists we now know as Pilgrims in 16th and 17th century England, to federal house raids and interrogations of early Mormons in the Utah Territory in the 19th century, to the 20th century surveillance of Jewish, Muslim, Quaker, and Sikh communities, to modern post-9/11 surveillance systems – government monitoring has long had a deep and disparate impact on American religious minorities.

The Color of Surveillance: Government Monitoring of American Religious Minorities will trace that history, and ask hard questions about what it means: Is modern surveillance consistent with the intentions of the American founders – or, for that matter, the events that precipitated the migration of English Separatists to the New World on the Mayflower? Do modern counterterrorism initiatives appropriately protect civil rights and civil liberties? How are local communities, advocates, and artists responding to these challenges?

Now in its third year, The Color of Surveillance, organized by the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, convenes academic, policy and government experts alongside local and community activists and artists. Prior speakers have included the Pulitzer-winning biographers of Martin Luther King, Jr. and W.E.B. DuBois, Guggenheim award-winning artists, and the general counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Welcome & Introduction to The Color of Surveillance: Government Monitoring of American Religious Minorities 8:45 – 9:00am

Dean William Treanor, Georgetown Law Alvaro Bedoya, Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law

Elizabeth I to the Early 20th Century 9:00 – 10:15am

"Hunted": 16th & 17th Century Surveillance of PilgrimsJohn Coffey, University of Leicester

Is the United States a Christian Nation?Brooke Allen, Bennington College

"Mohammedan Barbarism": The Campaign Against Early MormonsJ. Spencer Fluhman, Brigham Young University

The Military Intelligence Division and American Jews (A Transition)Alvaro Bedoya, Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law

The FBI and the Moorish Science Temple of AmericaSylvester A. Johnson, Virginia Tech

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